THE NE.,W YORKER months later that what had happened in 'hIS ou tfi t was directly connected with Task Force Barker's mIssion in Son My on March 16th. "Sometimes I thought it was just my platoon, my company, that was committing atro- cious acts, and what bad luck it was to get In it," Reid said. "But what we were doing was being done all over." The incident at My Khe 4 would perhaps be just another Vietnam atroc- ity story if it weren't for four facts: its vital connection with the M V Lai 4 tragedy; the American public's igno- rance of it; the total, detailed knowledge of it among the Peers investigators, the Department of the Army, and higher Pentagon officials; and the fail- ure of any of these agencies to see that the men involved were prosecuted. O N March 16, 1968, Major Gen- e ral Koster, the commdnder of the Americal Division, was near the peak of a brilliant Army career. At the age of forty-eight, he was a two- star general whose next assignment would be as Superintendent of the United States Military Academy. After that would probably come a promotion to lieutenant general, and perhaps an assignment as a corps commander in Germany, or even in South Vietnam again. Another promotion, to the rank of full general, would quickly foIIow, along with an assignment, possibly, as commander of one of the overseas United States Armies. By the middle or late nineteen-seventies, then, he would be among a group of ambitious, competent generals seeking Presidential appointment as Army Chief of Staff. Like most future candidates for the job of Chief of Staff, Koster had been ear- marked as a "comer" by his feIlow- officers since his days at West Point. In 1949, he had served in the high-pres- tige post of tactical officer at the Point, assigned to a cadet company as the man responsible for their training. By 1960, he had served in the operations office-the sensitive planning and co- ordinating post known to the military as G-3-of the Far East Command, in Tokyo, and also as Secretary of Staff of the Supreme Headquarters of the Allied Powers, Europe, in Paris. His career was patterned after that of his chief patron and supporter, Gen- eral Westmoreland, who in 1968 headed all military operations in South Vietnam. Westmoreland and Koster had served together in the Pentagon during the nineteen-fifties, both in key staff jobs, and Westmoreland had later become Superintendent of West Point. Koster's assignment in the fall of 1967 as commanding general of the ", y,. , "' \ " ", ^ , ... ,h , \ I; J t' ' w << r;-; I. L: r · · 'O"\J - i Wii"^ --- -" <Ø1Ii!1'! .F"' t W ,: , if "".." r I ..........--- i ------ - I ' r \1 ^4_ . t^ · -t >$"" ,. ')<- .. 40-.. , .. 4 ':,' f" .', " PM- .... . . , , , '.', , "^ I i / 39 f' ."<o; ". -- , \' '1 , , >i'" < \ . ",J i l' i ,.t ,, , ',}\..: P ;- ' ; , 't t J > .1 ..........""'-O''VY'_ (Io ::.... _ i , ,;: -- - - ---- .r , J r i ^ ì I , .. 1 <- , , t i "'---, "^C"" :;. ;, 41'S'-" f ,,'tio ,^ ,.. .... j 7 .---- MIt '\ Ì; y "Four o'clock, dear. (Sesame Street.'" . Americal Division could be under- estimated at first by outsiders: the Americal, a hastily assembled con- glome ration of independent infantry units, was far from an élite outfit. But the job, as the Peers investigation learned, was extremely important to the young general; he had been hand- picked by Westmoreland after a sharp debate inside military headquarters in Saigon over the future combat role of the division. As the Americal was ini- tiaIIy set up, it was composed of three separate five-thousand-man combat in- fantry brigades, each with its own sup- port units, such as artillery and cavalry Within a year the division was restruc- tured to make it more conventional and . to provide more centralized control. But when Koster took over, it was a new kInd of fighting unit, highly en- dorsed by Westmoreland, and pressure on the new commander was inevitable. Adding to the pressure was the low calibre of some of the officers initially assigned to the Americal by headquar- ters units. Lieutenant Colonel Clinton E. Granger, Jr., who served briefl) in the G-3 office of the new division late in 1 96 7 , told the Peers commission about his personnel problems. "In the G-3 section the quality of the personnel was not what one would ask in a divi- sion, to be perfectly honest," he said. "Among the field-grade officers, there was only one major in the entire sec-